Industrial vacuum equipment has dozens of wet and dry uses such as locating underground utilities (potholing), hydro-excavation, air excavation and vacuum excavation. In addition, the equipment can be used for directional drilling slurry removal, industrial clean-up, waste clean-up, lateral and storm drain clean-out, oil spill clean-up and other natural disaster clean-up applications.
In particular, hydro excavation applications use a combination of high pressure water and suction to dig a hole and vacuum the soil and water into a tank. The hydro excavation equipment may be mounted to a truck or trailer and is typically powered by gas or diesel engines. The native soil that is removed during hydro excavation is typically hauled away for disposal. Dry fill materials are then hauled back to the job site to back fill the hole and are compacted in place. The hauling of the native soil away from the job site and hauling new dry material back to the job site for compaction adds time and costs to the project. Accordingly, what is needed is a system and method to re-use native soils on-site in order to reduce time and costs during construction.
However, in view of the prior art at the time the present invention was made, it was not obvious to those of ordinary skill in the pertinent art how the identified needs could be fulfilled.